In a 2007 study going back more than 50 years, a Boeing safety group identified inflight loss of control as the number one source of airline fatalities. The 2008 Nall Report tells a similar story for general aviation. Loss of control inflight, or LOC-I in the argot of those who study aircraft accidents, includes a host of hazards ranging from garden-variety stalls to control surface hardovers and encounters with wake turbulence. LOC- I accidents happen to the spectrum of civilian pilots, from students to airline veterans. The stubbornness of LOC-I as the single largest cause of fatal accidents has a great deal to do with the way that we train. While the airlines have incorporated a number of loss-of-control scenarios in their training, general aviation hasnt really addressed the issue. The quality of GA training varies widely and most pilots have never been in a spin unless they trained to be flight instructors or took aerobatic lessons. Most stall training is aimed at avoidance rather than recovery. We fly to the horn, or if were really feeling brave, to the buffet, and then fly the airplane out. We rarely completely stall the airplane, especially in crossed-control or other aggravated configurations. So is it any wonder that when were confronted with a sudden loss of control of the airplane, we don’t typically react we’ll enough to live through the event?
Training
The world of aftermarket training has recognized this and several organizations offer so-called EMT or emergency maneuver training. We recently completed one such course, the APS Emergency Maneuver Training in Mesa, Arizona.
APS is one of the few such schools thats FAR Part 141 approved and thats also dedicated to this type of training. We completed the APS Professional Pilot Upset Recovery Training Course, which included the core upset recovery program, spin training and instrument recovery training. While there are a number of schools that offer this type of training, we feel that APS offers an excellent value based upon the qualifications of the instructors, the quality of the curriculum and the suitability of the airplane used.
All of the APS instructors are former or current military instructor pilots and a number have airline experience as well. We flew with the companys president, Paul “BJ” Ransbury and the director of flight training, Clarke “Otter” McNeace. Both flew F/A-18s, both have thousands of hours in the Extra 300 and both have strong academic backgrounds for the material theyre teaching.
Before each flight, they conducted a thorough briefing on the lesson. There was a great deal of stress on making sure that we understood the physics of the upset as we’ll as the recovery. They also repeated emphasis on the steps of the recovery procedure. After each flight, students are debriefed. We found that the debriefings were excellent reinforcement. The instructors have almost total recall of the specifics of the flight.
The airplanes are also equipped with video cameras mounted on the right wing, vertical stab and inside the cockpit. Particularly after the spin flights, video was used for the debriefings along with the instructors comments. Each student goes home with CDs of all of the flying that he did during the course.
We found the curriculum to be a good balance of academics and a rote building block approach to use in the airplane. We were furnished with the course manuals months before arriving and were urged to read them and re-read them before starting the course. We found that this helped speed up our learning substantially.
Everything that we were taught in the classroom sessions was carefully related to what we would see and do in the airplane, but there was a considerable underpinning of aerodynamics. None of this is rocket science, but we came away with a much better understanding of the fundamental importance of angle of attack, as we’ll as the effects of G-loading, roll-yaw coupling and negative roll damping.
All-Attitude Technique
In addition to the academic side of things, APS provides a building block approach which they call the “All-Attitude Recovery Technique,” a five-step procedure which allowed us to proceed one step at a time from total chaos to recovery of the airplane to an upright attitude. As the name implies, this technique is used for almost every situation except for fully-developed spins. For spins, APS uses the NASA spin-recovery technique. An important parts of the training is the “say and do” approach, which forces the student to name each step of the recovery process as he does it. We found that if we could say it, we could eventually do it as well. By the end of the course, the combination of increased understanding and repeated practice with the techniques made us feel that we would have the chance “to fly another day,” which is the APS motto.
For upset and spin training, APS relies upon two Extra 300Ls, complete with sharks teeth. While the point of the training is to learn to recover within the limits of standard or transport category airplanes, the Extras unlimited aerobatic capability and limit load of plus or minus 10 Gs make it an ideal airplane for this type of training.
There is no maneuver that cant be recovered and your internal organs will probably fail before the airplane does. The huge margin between the Gs that you pull in the course and the G-load the airplane is capable of enduring made us feel comfortable. And if you havent flown an Extra before, that opportunity alone is worth the entry fee.
Aside from the light stick forces, which took us about 15 minutes to get used to, there are few surprises. It goes where you point it and does what you think it will. If you have never flown with a stick, you’ll find the transition painless.
Tactical Feel
APS has a military feel to it and it is noticeable throughout the course. The instructors and some of the students wear flight suits. Most flights start as a formation flight of two airplanes out to the practice area, then break up into north and south working areas. At the end of the lesson, they rejoin for the brief flight back to the airport. If you are interested in trying your hand at formation flying, this is a good time for it. Missions, as APS refers to them, are crafted so that no time is wasted and yet we never felt that it was a problem if we wanted to see a given maneuver another time. And if we didnt do it correctly, the instructors would point out our errors so we would keep doing it until we had it right.
A number of maneuvers are put into the syllabus as demonstrations and we thought that these were we’ll chosen and great teaching tools. Our personal favorite was the zoom maneuver, which basically consists of pulling the nose up to about 30 degrees and then pushing till you are light in the seat-about G. The airplane flew a gentle arcing parabola and as airspeed dropped, we were encouraged to move the controls in order to see that when unloaded, the controls remained effective 20 knots below the published 1-G stall speed. This was an excellent graphic reminder of the effects of G-loading on angle of attack and stall speeds.
Envelope Expansion
The greatest benefit of the course is that the student, accompanied by an experienced instructor in a capable airplane, is able to safely explore areas of the envelope we’ll beyond what he will see in normal operations, or what he could live through if he saw it by himself for the first time.
The skidding turn stall is performed by starting a turn and then feeding in increasing amounts of inside rudder, while gradually adding aileron against overbank and back pressure in an attempt to keep the nose from falling.
When the stall comes, it is spectacular and it happens at a speed we’ll above the published stall speed, rolling the airplane onto its back briskly and leaving you looking down at rocks and desert; no blue sky, the proverbial face full of dirt. Using the all-attitude upset recovery technique, the student goes from step to step, fixing the upset by saying and making one control input at a time.
Another unusual attitude covered in the course is the spiral dive. When our instructor gave us the controls, the airspeed was almost 200 knots, and the G-load was about 3.8, we’ll beyond what you would want to do intentionally in your own airplane, but not so different from what might happen in the real situation.
We liked the businesslike approach that the instructors took toward the training. They carefully briefed the flight and then flew the mission as briefed. In case we missed anything, we then sat down and debriefed. We felt that there was a good balance of academics and the rote learning that must be at the heart of any emergency procedure where the pilot is not likely to be thinking clearly.
We think that the experience we gained during the course is invaluable. Our sense is that in order to remain proficient in the recovery procedures, we would have to return every two years or so.
The APS courses are not cheap. The two-day, three-flight Basic Upset Recovery course lists on the Website for $2415. The Standard Emergency Maneuver course lasts three days and includes five flights and lists for $3290. APS also offers training in formation flying, aerobatics and simulator training as well.
We felt that given the experience of the instructors, the curriculum and the airplane, that the price of the courses we took was an excellent value. We would recommend this school to any pilot who is interested in learning more about upset recovery. We will certainly be back next year.
Jon Doolittle owns Sutton James Insurance in Hartford, Connecticut. Contact www.suttonjames.com.
